NS Cliches: Rebooted

by **Dayganistan** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 5:01 pm

Valentine Z wrote:But I do know even in a dinner RP you need to make sure no one is packing heat.

I've seen this kind of stuff too. Someone has an RP for a dinner or ball or conference and someone always has to bring a huge, heavily armed security detail while their guest is also carrying.

by **Valentine Z** » Wed Jan 27, 2021 5:10 pm

Dayganistan wrote:
Valentine Z wrote:But I do know even in a dinner RP you need to make sure no one is packing heat.

I've seen this kind of stuff too. Someone has an RP for a dinner or ball or conference and someone always has to bring a huge, heavily armed security detail while their guest is also carrying.

They blew a damn hole in my precious Valentian White House!

Though to be fair, that was the first iteration with relaxed rules. So... yeah, have the rules.

No weapons or magic unless said magic is used for party tricks like lighting up the fireplace.

by **Zeloria** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:59 am

The best weapon against number-wanking, are not rules, but plot-armor. The giant army can't just easily destroy the smaller army because the small army got a super-weapon that can defeat the big army. Oh no, if only the big army could create a small but professional team, to take out the super-weapon.

(Wait, is that plot-armor or not?)

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't really care about winning, I care about everyone having fun.

by **Qhevak** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:32 pm

Zeloria wrote:The best weapon against number-wanking, are not rules, but plot-armor. The giant army can't just easily destroy the smaller army because the small army got a super-weapon that can defeat the big army. Oh no, if only the big army could create a small but professional team, to take out the super-weapon.

(Wait, is that plot-armor or not?)

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't really care about winning, I care about everyone having fun.

The real best countermeasure against numberwanking is just basic logistical concerns.

Oh, you're invading with 20,000 MBTs and millions of troops? Good luck maintaining the ridiculous supply chains necessary to support that many armored vehicles, and ever better luck when the hundreds of thousands of necessary supply trucks clog up the highway system and the invaded nation gets to play Highway of Death 2: Electic Boogaloo.

by **Remulia** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:02 pm

Dayganistan wrote:People in RPs who have to commit ludicrous amounts of military force to every possible conflict. It's lame, it's not fun, it's not creative, and it turns off people who want to be a little more grounded in reality. In II you always see people deciding they want to send hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of armoured vehicles and hundreds of aircraft to conflicts that often could be better suited to a few special forces teams or something. And I've been noticing a lot more of this recently.

Right now I am in a military RP where the number of troops is high ... although it can be justified by the fact that it is a war between star empires and obviously the armies of those nations are large, even so I try not to exaggerate with it. number of ships that are going to battle and I am ready to role-play an urban combat.

by **Dayganistan** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:32 pm

Remulia wrote:
Dayganistan wrote:People in RPs who have to commit ludicrous amounts of military force to every possible conflict. It's lame, it's not fun, it's not creative, and it turns off people who want to be a little more grounded in reality. In II you always see people deciding they want to send hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of armoured vehicles and hundreds of aircraft to conflicts that often could be better suited to a few special forces teams or something. And I've been noticing a lot more of this recently.

Right now I am in a military RP where the number of troops is high ... although it can be justified by the fact that it is a war between star empires and obviously the armies of those nations are large, even so I try not to exaggerate with it. number of ships that are going to battle and I am ready to role-play an urban combat.

There's a difference between having multiple millions of troops in an FT war between space empires and having millions of troops and hundreds of thousands of tanks in an MT conflict between nations on Earth or an equivalent planet. The former is generally fine, the latter can be highly annoying and often accompanies low effort one liner/pic spam RP.

12 March 2022

Dayganistan wrote:
Remulia wrote:
Right now I am in a military RP where the number of troops is high ... although it can be justified by the fact that it is a war between star empires and obviously the armies of those nations are large, even so I try not to exaggerate with it. number of ships that are going to battle and I am ready to role-play an urban combat.

There's a difference between having multiple millions of troops in an FT war between space empires and having millions of troops and hundreds of thousands of tanks in an MT conflict between nations on Earth or an equivalent planet. The former is generally fine, the latter can be highly annoying and often accompanies low effort one liner/pic spam RP.

Yup. And there's nothing seasoned RPers hate more than one-liner godmoding and trolls.

by **The Near Islands** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 3:54 pm

Zeloria wrote:The best weapon against number-wanking, are not rules, but plot-armor. The giant army can't just easily destroy the smaller army because the small army got a super-weapon that can defeat the big army. Oh no, if only the big army could create a small but professional team, to take out the super-weapon.

(Wait, is that plot-armor or not?)

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't really care about winning, I care about everyone having fun.

Not even a superweapon, just say that the giant army rolled a collective series of ones and died to an army of 500 angry farmers with shotguns.

by **Sanghyeok** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 3:58 pm

Qhevak wrote:
Zeloria wrote:The best weapon against number-wanking, are not rules, but plot-armor. The giant army can't just easily destroy the smaller army because the small army got a super-weapon that can defeat the big army. Oh no, if only the big army could create a small but professional team, to take out the super-weapon.

(Wait, is that plot-armor or not?)

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't really care about winning, I care about everyone having fun.

The real best countermeasure against numberwanking is just basic logistical concerns.

Oh, you're invading with 20,000 MBTs and millions of troops? Good luck maintaining the ridiculous supply chains necessary to support that many armored vehicles, and ever better luck when the hundreds of thousands of necessary supply trucks clog up the highway system and the invaded nation gets to play Highway of Death 2: Electic Boogaloo.

The solution

by **Voxija** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:03 pm

Other nations assuming that the AN is a cliché, without reading any of the AN's factbooks.

And nations who post in a slave trading thread only to condemn slavery and the OP, in either one-liners or complete illegible walls of text, never the middle ground.

by **Kiu Ghesik** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:06 pm

Voxija wrote:Other nations assuming that the AN is a cliché, without reading any of the AN's factbooks.

And nations who post in a slave trading thread only to condemn slavery and the OP, in either one-liners or complete illegible walls of text, never the middle ground.

Just pull a Shuraya and politely insult their mothers in response, works every time.

Another cliché, from the news thread: People just reading the headlines and ignoring the body of a story if the AN decides to write out a news story instead of just pointing at a ticker in their sig.

by **Kazakah** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:15 pm

"[Insert Nation] sends 5 million troops to [Foreign Civil War]."

This one annoys me because I'd like a military RP that at least somewhat represents real life. There's never any considerations to the politics of declaring and joining wars.

Not to mention its godmodding and completely obliterates other nations efforts as they would effectively get steamrolled in real life.

by **Azur Deutschland** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:17 pm

I love that I decided upon magic because I can either make it balanced or just make it insanely broken depending on my mood.

by **Kiu Ghesik** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:18 pm

Azur Deutschland wrote:I love that I decided upon magic because I can either make it balanced or just make it insanely broken depending on my mood.

Magic's just an anti-wank button at the end of the day, innit?

Or the exact opposite, depending on the circumstance.

by **Las Palmeras** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:22 pm

Azur Deutschland wrote:I love that I decided upon magic because I can either make it balanced or just make it insanely broken depending on my mood.

You have ~~horses~~ magical mecha! What were ~~you~~ we thinking!?

Kiu Ghesik wrote:
Azur Deutschland wrote:I love that I decided upon magic because I can either make it balanced or just make it insanely broken depending on my mood.

Magic's just an anti-wank button at the end of the day, innit?

Or the exact opposite, depending on the circumstance.

I'd bullshit my way around it by declaring magic works in certain dimensions and not in others due to physics...something I have planned for Tohorin. That'd leave me vulnerable to FT uber-empires...but...well...al the nations I operate are anthills anyways so, eh.

by **Azur Deutschland** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:23 pm

Kiu Ghesik wrote:Magic's just an anti-wank button at the end of the day, innit?

Or the exact opposite, depending on the circumstance.

Yeah, pretty much.

Las Palmeras wrote:You have ~~horses~~ magical mecha! What were ~~you~~ we thinking!?

~~Mmm, I hate that subreddit because someone decided to post my sig there out of context.~~

I'd bullshit my way around it by declaring magic works in certain dimensions and not in others due to physics...something I have planned for Tohorin. That'd leave me vulnerable to FT uber-empires...but...well...al the nations I operate are anthills anyways so, eh.

True, but there's also the possibility that I could just say my magic works differently. Though, I wouldn't pull that card unless someone was extremely hellbent on trying to godmod and what not.

by **Kiu Ghesik** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:29 pm

Las Palmeras wrote:I'd bullshit my way around it by declaring magic works in certain dimensions and not in others due to physics...something I have planned for Tohorin. That'd leave me vulnerable to FT uber-empires...but...well...al the nations I operate are anthills anyways so, eh.

~~_{something something tower lads something something dead Englishmen}~~

To this day I find it funny that my most FT alt can't actually defeat either other FT nations or even PT-MT nations in open warfare based simply on the fact I decided to make their population ungodly small and their tech advancement non-uniform. But that's a story for another time, though it does bring me to another point:

Considerations of population. Especially in FT nations, people seem to take it for granted that your population scales with the size of your territory; while that's true to some extent, I find it more interesting to think about scenarios where population doesn't do that. The number of factors limiting population and population density are more than just how much territory you hold, but more often than not that's all people consider.

I suppose NS scaling up your population over time might help to imply that to people without much knowledge of demographics ~~a category that includes myself~~

by **Synne Industries** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:42 pm

Honestly a lot of the problems when it comes to nation-to-nation conflict, especially military conflict, is that universes don't like to mix.

You see this on F7 in particular. When you're replying to someone, you've pretty much got free reign to declare whatever you'd like and the worst you'll get back is an angry /skipme response. This pretty much allows you to impose your universe's tones and such to whomever and of course this means things get messy. At least in an organized rp setting people can plan out interactions, on F7 literally anyone can reply and especially when it comes to war threads it just devolves into a big wankfest of misinterpretation. No, of course this semi-realistic take on a Type 5 FFT civilization isn't going to blend well with a FanT universe of fancy artifacts and anime battles, but if someone's gonna reply then someone's gonna force it and more often than not they're just going to force it in a way which favors themselves. The best I can really advise is if a universe really doesn't mix well with someone else's, just don't reply until someone better fitting becomes the AN or AAN or whatever. I'm not going to put out names but I know of some people who completely ignore this and more or less curbstomp whoever is immediately there usually with the same reply that they used the last dozen times. It has really reached that point where it's comparable to someone pulling out the big anti-bullshit cannon whenever instead of only leaving it there passively to dissuade actual wankers from curbstomping them. Just because you're not some big flashy space empire it doesn't mean you're exempt from powerwanking on F7.

Rant over I'd say. Just needed to get this out because there's only so many bloody one-liners someone can take.

by **Remulia** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:44 pm

Kiu Ghesik wrote:
Las Palmeras wrote:I'd bullshit my way around it by declaring magic works in certain dimensions and not in others due to physics...something I have planned for Tohorin. That'd leave me vulnerable to FT uber-empires...but...well...al the nations I operate are anthills anyways so, eh.

~~_{something something tower lads something something dead Englishmen}~~

To this day I find it funny that my most FT alt can't actually defeat either other FT nations or even PT-MT nations in open warfare based simply on the fact I decided to make their population ungodly small and their tech advancement non-uniform. But that's a story for another time, though it does bring me to another point:

Considerations of population. Especially in FT nations, people seem to take it for granted that your population scales with the size of your territory; while that's true to some extent, I find it more interesting to think about scenarios where population doesn't do that. The number of factors limiting population and population density are more than just how much territory you hold, but more often than not that's all people consider.

I suppose NS scaling up your population over time might help to imply that to people without much knowledge of demographics ~~a category that includes myself~~

Godular is a nation were the size of its population is not related to the amount of territory it owns.

by **Bukharan State** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:02 pm

Synne Industries wrote:-snip-

POV: you're a regionally sized PMT/MT nation and the nation that replies below you in a "would YN beat AN thread" and they span the entire multiverse with a bazillion gamma ray weapons all linked together in a hivemind consciousness and just reply with a singular "yes"

not that i focus much on military for any of my nations anyhow, i gloss over such things heavily. i think i had a page once in federal remnants that was fission powered armor but i deleted it because that wasn't really the focus of the nation, even then that nation would be quickly curbstomped by the first space empire that walks around the corner

by **Las Palmeras** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:07 pm

Kiu Ghesik wrote:Considerations of population. Especially in FT nations, people seem to take it for granted that your population scales with the size of your territory; while that's true to some extent, I find it more interesting to think about scenarios where population doesn't do that. The number of factors limiting population and population density are more than just how much territory you hold, but more often than not that's all people consider.

I suppose NS scaling up your population over time might help to imply that to people without much knowledge of demographics ~~a category that includes myself~~

Why I wouldn't touch FT with a stick. I like to play with things I'm familiar with and I'm no tech geek or futuroligist to spend my time writing about interplanetary territories. Calculating how big a shitty JRPG's Medieval Not-France and England would be like? Cool. How much farmers can provide in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest in a roughly late-PT setting, Fine. ~~Guesstimating how much Japanese people would starve after Downfall. Ok.~~ I'm not uncreative, I'm just obsessive, that's all.

Remulia wrote:Godular is a nation were the size of its population is not related to the amount of territory it owns.

People assume that big numbers makes things better. I get those sort of replies with Tohorin, which is actually super-OP IMO because I raised the "realistic" number of 300k inhabitants to 2.6 million thanks to plot-convenient advances in water managementand plowing because people were dumbfounded Tohorin could take on a larger kingdom of 24 million people...but that was the most realistic part of my Canon:

Tohorin IS desert and wilderness. And it's enemy, Midland, is pre-industrial. It can't drill into aquifers to farm and it won't make railroads to bring supplies to colonists to make numbers matter. No amount of military might matters if you can't give your badass armies food and water regularly and if your enemy simply packs their bags and scatters.

Azur Deutschland wrote:~~Mmm, I hate that subreddit because someone decided to post my sig there out of context.~~

That's just scummy.

by **Zaviana** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:24 pm

Have yall ever thought of the fact that every PT/MT/FT nation are the same thing? Like, i know there's outliers and uniques, but it's always: PT: Spear, Basic Farming tools, bows, etc.
MT: what we have now
FT: Spaceships, lasers, teleportation, etc.

by **The Near Islands** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:30 pm

Synne Industries wrote:-snip-

To add on to this, one of my biggest pet peeves is when nations write off other nations as 'irrelevant' or 'easily crushable' because they aren't some MT Superpower or Galactic-Spanning FFT nation. Like, yeah, no shit - a monarchy made up of cowboys yes, this is Wexas. hello there! or a medieval post-apocalyptic survivalist nation with a population of 2,240 isn't going to be relevant in the greater scheme of things. Nor is those mentioned 2,240 people with swords and bows going to be able to beat an army of billions of omnipotent supersoldiers. The thing is, that isn't the point. The point wasn't to make some overpowered FFT Wank with a strong military that crushes everything, nor was it to create a MT superpower that represents my views and is perfect because itjustworks.mp4. My point was to have fun, just like you (not you in particular Synne, people like this). So why you gotta belittle me for not making a nation consisting entirely of supersoldiers?

sorry for the rant, but I have been making PT nations/other nations considered 'small' in scale since 2017. It gets tiring to hear 'hehehehe, lol. ur nation weak and irrelevant.' And don't get me wrong, it enrages me when I see it happening to others as well. RIP Kiu Ghesik.

by **Kiu Ghesik** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:38 pm

Bukharan State wrote:
Synne Industries wrote:-snip-

POV: you're a regionally sized PMT/MT nation and the nation that replies below you in a "would YN beat AN thread" and they span the entire multiverse with a bazillion gamma ray weapons all linked together in a hivemind consciousness and just reply with a singular "yes"

feelsbadman.jpg

not that i focus much on military for any of my nations anyhow, i gloss over such things heavily. i think i had a page once in federal remnants that was fission powered armor but i deleted it because that wasn't really the focus of the nation, even then that nation would be quickly curbstomped by the first space empire that walks around the corner

>tfw you decided to write a military firm-sf drama and can't write military hardware to save your life
>why do i do this to myself

I was wondering where the power armor page went to. I suppose that answers that question; the outer void.

Las Palmeras wrote:Why I wouldn't touch FT with a stick. I like to play with things I'm familiar with and I'm no tech geek or futuroligist to spend my time writing about interplanetary territories. Calculating how big a shitty JRPG's Medieval Not-France and England would be like? Cool. How much farmers can provide in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest in a roughly late-PT setting, Fine. ~~Guesstimating how much Japanese people would starve after Downfall. Ok.~~ I'm not uncreative, I'm just obsessive, that's all.

That's its own kind of creativity, I can get that. And tbh I'm fairly certain my population estimates for space weed are overestimates, but I kind of need a way to justify to the reader why seven hundred people dying is a big thing for a massively-spread-out spacefaring humanity with literally ~7000 stars under its total control, so you're not alone in this particular struggle.

No amount of military might matters if you can't give your badass armies food and water regularly and if your enemy simply packs their bags and scatters.

^This. KG's population has the same thing, I actually upped the population to about 150k in an area the size of the entirety of the Caucasus and Iran because I felt that it wouldn't make sense for a smaller population to go against a power that could theoretically field armies the size of its original population thanks to cheap conscription and a lack of care for feeding its bois nutritious food, despite the fact that thanks to their lack of hard targets and nomadic nature it totally would make sense for them to beat back the regular sort of campaigns they might end up facing. It's just... playing around with different modes of organizing societies is fun, but it can be rather opaque and inaccessible sometime.

Azur Deutschland wrote:~~Mmm, I hate that subreddit because someone decided to post my sig there out of context.~~

Yeah, reddit tends to turn any amusing joke into a circlejerk as soon as the community grows large enough. It's a shitty deal but it's reality.

Zaviana wrote:Have yall ever thought of the fact that every PT/MT/FT nation are the same thing? Like, i know there's outliers and uniques, but it's always: PT: Spear, Basic Farming tools, bows, etc.
MT: what we have now
FT: Spaceships, lasers, teleportation, etc.

Well, there's a reason for that. There's not much room for deviation from "plow", "spear" "bow" and such concepts when those are the simplest tools that you can make. I'll admit there's room for more deviation in MT and FT stuff that's not always utilized but then again if you want to write a story set in a society that's in any way similar to our own you have to adopt the technology of a society similar to our own. I heard a metaphor for character design that I'll apply here, making a good character- or society- is more a matter of coming up with new, unique twists on elements that the reader can understand, not on coming up with radically different organs- or technologies- that make the story nigh-inaccessible.

(Also we have both spaceships and lasers right now, just pointing that out)

by **Synne Industries** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:38 pm

Zaviana wrote:Have yall ever thought of the fact that every PT/MT/FT nation are the same thing? Like, i know there's outliers and uniques, but it's always: PT: Spear, Basic Farming tools, bows, etc.
MT: what we have now
FT: Spaceships, lasers, teleportation, etc.

Eh, depends.

Some nations fall into the same general categories, yes, but there very much is uniqueness in tech brackets. Think about the real world and its differing nation states, their unique cultures, economies, and histories. Even from a technological standpoint there's a lot to play around with. Some countries generally excel at certain fields while maybe lagging behind in others. You see this a lot of FT where some nations take a hard science approach and are usually forced to stick to less extreme technological advancements to avoid going too far into speculative and theoretical tech. Other FT nations may just ditch any semblance of reality and go full eldritch Clarketech "I have met with a terrible fate". You know, one thing I don't see enough is variation in PT. Just because the real world's past had certain technologies doesn't mean you have to conform to it. Create alternate worlds where certain fields of technologies advanced or regressed (of course with reasonable limitations), there's so much potential in what you can do and there are an equal amount of societal ramifications that come with alt-tech. It can lead to some pretty gnarly cursed PT chaos and as we all know, chaos can be a lot of fun.

NS Cliches: Rebooted

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